Event Description:Through seven years of war, Syrian artists have played a crucial role as witnesses to the devastation of their country, and to the suffering and fortitude of its people. This one-day conference explores Syrian cultural producers’ varied responses to the ongoing conflict. Visual artists, playwrights, musicians, and filmmakers invoke, critique, and give voice to experiences of oppression, trauma, exile, and loss. Wartime works reflect an intensification of the outrage, longing, ambivalence, irony, and contradiction that have long imbued Syrian expressive culture. This conference showcases rarely seen works by Syrian artists, and places their creators in dialogue with a young generation of Syrian academics and activists.

This is a Lehman Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies Eighth Annual Conference. It is co-sponsored by the Leonard Lief Library and the Department of Anthropology.

9:45: Subhiyya ( Morning Coffee)

10:00 am Welcome

Lehman College President José Louis Cruz
Christa Salamandra, Lehman College and the Graduate Center

10:10-11:45 am Panel One

Framing Conflict: Photography as Documentation and Engagement
Bassam Khabieh, Photographer, Reuters (via skype from Syria) in conversation with Nour Halabi, University of Pennsylvania.

11:45 am-1:45 pm Panel Two

To Be or Not To Be? Film as Intervention
Film Screening: Shakespeare in Zaatari. 2016 (35 minutes).
Maan Mouslli, Director (via Skype from Germany) in conversation with Marianna al-Tabbaa, New York University.

1:45-2:30 pm Lunch

2:30 pm-3:45 pm Panel Three

Illuminating Absurdities: Theater as Critique
Play Reading: The Goats.
Liwaa Yazigi, Playwright (via Skype from Germany) in conversation with Katty al-Hayek, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

3:45-4:15 pm Panel Four

Filming Survival
Film Screening: Syria: Under a State of Fear (16 minutes) with producer Aya Aljamili, American University.

4:15-4:30 pm Coffee Break

4:30-6:30 pm Panel Five

Playing it Again: Music as Cultural Preservation and Transformation
Samer Ali, Violinist and Founder of the Syrian Music Preservation Initiative, in conversation with Aya Aljamili, American University.
Musical performance, members of Takht a-Negham Ensemble.